Today I’m going to tell you how scorpions mate, based on a lecture my dad came up with in 1989. I remember watching him type it up on our IBM computer, which had a black and white screen (blue and grey, really) and ran MS-DOS, which was, like, the coolest thing in 1989. The four-year-old me – much cuter, a tiny bit shorter – used to play “Jeopardy!” on it at every opportunity, which is why I turned out this way. Anyway, to scorpions.

“Scorpion mating is usually initiated by the male. When the female is receptive, the male grasps the pedipalps (sorta like scorpion hands) of the female with his, and together they walk backwards, forwards and side-to-side . . . there is no true copulation. Instead, the male discharges a sperm transfer capsule (spermatophore) from his genital orifice which he glues to the substrate. By parading, the male directs the female over the spermatophore which she picks up with her genital operculum.”

In other words: male scorpions are cheeky motherfuckers. Apparently, males sometimes inject the females with venom to pacify them so they don’t lose interest. Sometimes the baby mama can get her revenge by eating the son of a bitch, but Wikipedia says this happens infrequently.